I read the original version of this as a long tweet, and it made the bus ride to work very depressing.
Starmer’s Labour Party seem set on ruling out policies that would help them and the country long term, just to appease the right wing press that will never support them anyway. Expect more ‘make Brexit work’, and worse, as the general election approaches.
After Pride over the Bank Holiday weekend, this last one was more focused on Anger. Are we working our way through the seven sins? Next week, maybe I’ll just stay in bed for Saturday and Sunday. A big feast the one after.
I can’t wait for Lust to turn up.
Extinction Rebellion was in town from Friday to today, closing a section of Deansgate to traffic, and making it civilised. I visited, and took photos, on Friday and Saturday. It actually upset me, in a strange way, because it reminded me of the Reclaim The Streets demos I participated in in the 90s. We didn’t see the change we called for then until fairly recently, and then only slow and flawed. We don’t have two decades to wait for things to get done about climate change.
Also on Friday was August’s Critical Mass. But I’d walked in, so I just took some photos.
Saturday saw my second visit to Extinction Rebellion, and the Stop The Coup demo, which started out in Cathedral Gardens, and made its way to Albert Square, despite starting in very heavy rain.
Then it was down to Platt Fields for something not angry- the Festival of Manchester. I got some nice photos, then there was more heavy rain, so I abandoned it early.
It’s going to be a busy Autumn, and I’ll try to get to as many of these demos as possible, getting photos and video when I do.
Going through an old hard drive yesterday, I came across the files for the “Nick Griffin is NOT my MEP” design I did when that disgusting little racist toad slimed his way to a seat in the European Parliament. It seemed appropriate to update the design.
Ann Widdecombe is NOT my MEP and Nigel Farage is NOT my MEP, are available on a variety of items- from T shirts to tea cups- in my Redbubble shop.
The ‘Brexit novel’ is a thing, but they tend to be literary works, which aren’t really my thing. I would like to make the case for Northern Gorehouse being not only a fun alternative, but also one of the first to be published
The novel was finished in April or May of 2017, but it didn’t feel right to release it so soon after the Arena bombing, given the violent ending of the story. So it came out for Halloween of that year.
The book was written as an action horror story. The ability to map the stupid politics of the last few years onto it is a bonus. Indeed, the B word is only mentioned once in the story, right at the beginning, to establish the run down state of the nation, and show how the vampires have come in to take advantage of it.
Vampires as a stand in for capitalists and the ruling elite is not a new metaphor, but as I’ve established it’s post Brexit, I’m going to call them the disaster capitalists who caused, and benefit from, all the pain. Being vampires, they, of course, take advantage of the homeless the country has abandoned. And have corrupt servants in the political system, covering up for them, and pushing policies that aid them. Again, not new tropes in vampire fiction, but ones that map perfectly well onto the Brexit theme.
Of course, the political allegory was never the main aim of the story, and it’s harder to map metaphor onto it once the action really starts. The zombies are created by the vampires but (spoiler) it’s an accident. In a true Brexit allegory, they would be a deliberate method for distracting people at street level and keeping them away from turning on the elite.
Similarly, the fact that vampires exist wouldn’t be such a shock in a more pointed Brexit take. Everyone would have at least an inkling they were there, but their bought politicians and the media would be demanding that people look the other way.
Since I wrote the book, I’ve discovered another character who wasn’t included- the Brave Warrior claiming to be from a long line of vampire hunters, who has actually betrayed the people they pretend to be protecting, for reasons that don’t make any sense. There’s no Lexit Van Helsing in Northern Gorehouse.
I think you should read my accidental Brexit novel. If nothing else, you can pretend the vampires are Farage, Gove, Johnson et al. (It won’t be any stretch at all with Rees Mogg.)
I’ve been arguing Brexit with a Lexiteer (or whatever they call themselves), and it drove me to write this little rant. I can’t understand how someone on the Left can be such a noisy cheerleader for this-
The referendum was called by a Right wing Prime Minister, to appease the Right wing of his party, lest they defect to an even more Right wing single issue party.
The Leave campaign was funded by dodgy businessmen who saw exit from the EU as a way to decimate workers’ rights and consumer protections so they could make more profits. It also offered the chance to escape proposed EU rules cracking down on tax avoidance.
Labour Leave was funded by the same people.
The Leave campaign traded in lies and anti-EU tropes established by decades of propaganda in the Right wing press.
Despite the billions in free publicity pre-loaded into the campaign by the papers’ propaganda, and all manner of cheating, Leave only managed to win by a narrow margin.
So a new Right wing PM, with an authoritarian streak and a history of attacking immigrants, took this narrow victory, and used it to justify major constitutional change. She drew the team to plan it from her Right wing party, and always bent to the demands of the same Right wing members her predecessor had been pandering to, no matter how impossible they were. Meanwhile, the Far Right, buoyed up by the victory a bit of bullying won them, threatened riots if they didn’t get their demands met in negotiations.
We’re now in a position where the Right wing PM is basing the decisions she’ll allow to be made on Brexit on the demands of the same narrow band of Right wingers her predecessor was afraid of. She’s going to do whatever she thinks will save her party from disintegration, rather than what will work out best for the country.
Yet, still, the Socialist Leaver will go out of their way to insult anyone who dares point out any of these facts, because they believe that, somehow, this Right wing project will lead to a Left wing utopia. Never mind the long term damage this will do to the communities they claim to stand with, or the huge steps backwards for all their other ideals. They’ll betray those to give a victory to the ‘neoliberal bosses club’ they claim to hate.
There are reasons I have no sympathy for Lexiters’ claims they have anyone else’s interests at heart, or even any coherent policies.
Okay, I’m well over a year late with this one, but the idea came to me last night. Proclaim yourself a Citizen of Nowhere, as coined in a speech by Theresa May, in college sweatshirt style.